When You Were Young
by Angelina Johnson
Summary: One-shot. Written for Day 2 of Tumblr's 'Ryley Week.' Prompt: Kid!Ryley. Marley Rose was the little girl who dreamed of falling in love with her best friend some day. She just took a while to figure out who her best friend was.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. The title is a Killers song. The characters belong to the creators of Glee.

**Author's Note:** Warning: Cheesy crap ahead.

_When You Were Young_

_Ryley Week Day 2 – Kid!Ryley_

When she was in kindergarten, Marley was surrounded by little girls who loved to dress up in frilly princess dresses and dream of finding their prince charming. By the time she was seven, most of those same girls had somehow changed their minds and wanted to end up as the popular girl with the babd boy falling at their feet.

Marley Rose was never either type of girl. She was the type of girl who wanted to fall in love with her best friend.

She just didn't know who her best friend was at first.

The first time she saw her next door neighbor Jake, she thought he was the cutest boy in the whole world. When she was four, he would play on the see-saw at the corner playground with her, spending countless hours bouncing her high up into the air and then watching her plummet back down to the ground on the seat opposite of him. When they were five and the neighborhood kids made fun of her for being bad at sports, Jake would pick her to be on his team second-to-last so that she didn't have to awkwardly be the last girl standing there. When they were six, she had been the only girl invited to his birthday party. When they were seven, Marley told her mother that she was going to marry Jake some day.

When they were seven, though, was when Jake started to change.

The first day of school, Jake got "married" on the playground to a blond girl named Katherine, who told Marley during the "wedding" that her lunch-lady mom was fat and gross, and someday Marley would be too. Instead of sticking up for her like the old Jake would have, he just laughed at her.

Marley went home from school crying. She was so distracted by the moving van across the street and all the boxes being carried in through the open front door that she didn't notice someone chasing after her, and Jake caught up with her right outside her house to apologize. He told her that she would never be fat and gross, but that they still had to be "secret friends" at school from now on.

Marley had sniffled one more time and wiped her tears, too happy that they were friends to pay much notice to the word "secret." She also didn't pay much attention to the brown-haired boy across the street, holding his mother's hand just outside his new house, staring at his new neighbor as if she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen.

A couple of hours later, when there came a knock on the door, Marley expected it to be Jake coming over for their usual Monday game of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, but when she ran and flung the door open, her face crumpled when she realized it wasn't Jake at all.

Instead, the little boy from across the street was standing there, his hand clutched in his mother's again as he offered her a shy smile despite the fact that she was now pouting.

Marley's mom appeared behind her in the door frame, pushing the door open a bit wider and saying amicably, "You must be the new neighbors! I'm Millie Rose, and this is my daughter Marley. Do come in!"

The woman and the boy walked into their front foyer, and Marley looked across to where they had two nice cars in their driveway and a basketball hoop already set up. She shuffled, embarrassed and still annoyed that someone else was here when this was supposed to be her time with Jake, but she stopped pouting long enough to catch that the boy's name was Ryder Lynn.

Millie and Mrs. Lynn shooed Ryder and Marley off to play while they settled into the kitchen to get acquainted with each other, and the young girl pouted as the boy's eyes lit up at the sight of Mr. and Mrs. Potato head, already laid out on the playroom floor, just waiting for Jake to arrive.

"Can I play with him?" Ryder asked, crouching down and looking up hopefully at Marley. She nodded reluctantly, realizing that it was long past the time that Jake would normally show up and taking a seat cross-legged across from Ryder. She didn't pick up Mrs. Potato Head, just watched the new boy as he dressed the other potato up as a prince.

"Jake always dresses him up as a soccer player," Marley said, picking up a Mrs. Potato Head that was already clad in a tiara. She always hoped that Jake would let them play potato royalty, but her best friend never did.

"Well then why is yours dressed up as a princess? I thought you would like it if he was a prince for her to marry," the new boy said, looking genuinely confused. It was as if making his potato match what Marley wanted was the most natural thing in the world, and as she settled into playing with him, she decided that, he still was no Jake, but maybe this new neighbor wasn't so bad after all.

It turned out the new boy went to her school as well, and he stood by her side as they waited to be picked for kickball the next day at recess. Maybe it was because he didn't know anyone else, or maybe he had this mistaken impression that he had made an instant best friend in town the night before by acting out a Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head Royal Wedding with her, but there was no way he could ever take Jake's place, and she turned her back away from him as she waited to see what happened with the team choosing.

Jake was a captain, as always, but this time, he didn't make sure Marley got picked. She was the very last person to be put on a team. She did an even worse job than usual, upset that she wasn't even on the same team as Jake. Everyone yelled at her when she fumbled the ball in the outfield except for Ryder, who ran after it and got it for her, helping her toss it back into the infield just in time to stop a run from scoring.

Everyone quickly noticed that Ryder was really good at not just kickball but at pretty much every other sport they played too, and soon Ryder and Jake were the opposing captains every day. The first day that Ryder was choosing teams, Marley was standing in the back of their classmates, pouting at the prospect of being picked last once more. To add insult to injury, Jake picked Katherine first, even though she wasn't very good.

Riydr picked Marley first for his team that day. He picked her first for every day after that, too.

She wasn't even sure why she still played except for the fact that it was a chance to hang out with Jake, because he was stopping by her house to play less and less often lately. A lot of days she saw him go across the street rather than coming next door, and she would see him disappear into Ryder's house.

She thought that the two would have been faster friends than they were, because they liked a lot of the same things, but at school Ryder didn't seem to have any patience for Jake. He told Marley that he thought Katherine and Jake were both mean, and he often times plopped down next to her instead. Still, anyone who asked knew that Jake Puckerman was Marley's best friend, no matter how much Ryder Lynn followed her around.

At the class Halloween party, Jake stole Marley's cookie off of her plate while his friends laughed. He took a big bite right in front of her face then walked away, back over to sit with Katherine and some other people who never seemed to have anything to say to Marley. She felt her eyes well up with tears, and she was about to ask if she could go to the bathroom (to cry in peace) when she felt a hand tap on her shoulder.

"Do you want my cookie?" Ryder asked, and Marley shook her head stubbornly. She didn't want anything from Ryder Lynn. She just wanted her best friend to be nice to her again.

Ryder ignored her and broke the cookie in half, putting one piece in her hands and the other down on his plate, as if he was planning on giving that to her later, too. Marley didn't know what kind of boy shared his cookies, but she took a bite out of the soft sugar cookie, a smile cracking onto her face as she chewed on the sprinkles and licked the icing off of her lips.

After Christmas, Jake spilled hot chocolate in Marley's seat on the bus, leaving her mortified when her khaki pants turned brown on her bottom. Ryder gave her his jacket for the rest of the fieldtrip they were on, shivering next to her as she kept it tied around her waist to hide the stain. He wouldn't take it back until they were safely in her front yard after school that day. Jake never apologized.

Jake spent less and less time around the Rose household, but every time he did show up, Marley thought it was just like before. Like he was still the best friend that she'd ever had, even if she had to keep it a secret.

On Valentine's Day, Marley tried to give him a candy necklace on the playground as a present. He threw it back at her. She also watched as he gave every girl in the class a Valentine but her at their class party. Ryder watched her face crumple, and he hurriedly drew her a picture and wrote her a note from a 'Secret Admirer' that he snuck into her desk, which made all the other girls in the class jealous. He also filled out an extra Valentine and pretended it was from Jake, slipping it into her bag while she wasn't paying attention. Marley pretended not to notice that it was on the same Spongebob Squarepants cards that Ryder had passed out, or that Jake's name wasn't written in Jake's handwriting.

In April, Jake told her that doing an Easter egg hunt wasn't cool anymore, and he refused to search for the dozens of eggs her mom had hidden for them. Ryder stayed out in the rain with Marley and helped her find every last one. He also went through all the jelly beans inside of them and let his neighbor keep all her favorite flavors. Jake stopped by on his way home from Katherine's and pocketed a bunch of her candy, barely sparing time to wish her a happy holiday as he popped the jelly beans into his mouth and made his way out the door.

By Marley's eighth birthday that August, when she sat waiting on her front porch for Jake to show up to her party while Ryder tried to make her balloon animals and attempted to juggle just to make her laugh, Marley realized that Jake Puckerman wasn't her best friend anymore. Ryder Lynn was.

The first time she saw her across the street neighbor Ryder, Marley was annoyed that he wasn't Jake, and she was reluctant to share her toys with him. When she turned twelve, she admitted to herself that he was way cuter than Jake had ever been. By the time she was fourteen, Ryder would sit on the swings in his backyard with her late into the night, talking to her about anything and everything and not caring that he was so tired his eyes were starting to close. When they were fifteen and Jake and the other jocks made fun of her for being a loser, Ryder kissed a crying Marley and told her she was the most perfect girl in the entire world. By the time they were sixteen, she was Ryder Lynn's girlfriend. Right after she turned seventeen, Marley told her mother that she was going to marry Ryder some day.

When they were twenty-four, Marley did just that.


End file.
